The Antenatal Group

by Amy Bratley

  ‘Gary!’ she said, pushing open the bathroom door to find him standing there with his sleeves pushed up as if he was about to deliver a calf. ‘I’m going to need a chauffeur, not a vet.’

  For Lexi, everything happened very, very quickly. Too quickly, she decided afterwards. One minute the baby was safe and warm inside her and a couple of hours later, her baby was in her arms, taking her first few breaths, blinking in the bedroom light. There had been no time to squirt her face with the water spritzer she’d bought in Boots, no time to eat an energy bar or put on her playlist of Dolly Parton favourites. There’d barely been time to take her trousers off! After the bloody show, the contractions had become so powerful and frequent she knew she couldn’t travel in the car after all. She was having her baby at home.

  ‘I’m having this baby at home,’ she’d told Gary, wild-eyed.

  With Gary blinking like a rabbit in headlights and holding her arm, she made it to her bedroom and, after half an hour of overwhelmingly painful contractions, her waters broke all over her duvet and she felt the urge to push. Gary, on the phone to a midwife at the labour unit, his high, quivery voice betraying his calm demeanour, repeated instructions to Lexi not to push yet, while they sent midwives to her address. He spoke to her in a quiet voice and held a cup of water under her lips when she was thirsty. He put towels down under her legs, without being asked. She felt strangely safe in his company and, frankly, didn’t care a jot what he thought of her birthing positions. She was doing what her body dictated and was in awe of her instinct. While she focused on the increasingly intense contractions, he let the midwives in through the front door and waited in the kitchen while they encouraged her through the final pushes, cheering as if she were in the final leg of a marathon, before the baby shot out into the midwife’s arms.

  ‘You have a baby girl,’ the midwife exclaimed, handing her immediately to Lexi, while another midwife cut the cord. ‘Baby was born at 12.33 a.m.’

  ‘A girl?’ Lexi said, amazed. ‘I was certain I was going to have a boy!’

  She held her baby girl in her arms while the midwives worked around her and helped her deliver the placenta. Lexi hardly dared move, the baby was so tiny and new. With a wise and serious expression on her face, she fixed Lexi with a soulful stare that reached the very centre of Lexi’s heart and squeezed it tight.

  ‘Oh, baby,’ she whispered into her deep, marble-dark eyes. Look at you! Here in my arms! You’re delicate as a petal and lovelier than I ever expected. I’m your mummy and—’ The donor came into Lexi’s mind for a nanosecond, his DNA in her hands, but then became bizarrely immaterial. She didn’t think of him again. The midwives left her alone for a few moments, and Lexi felt a sense of quiet peace and enormous relief, for she was now, at last, a mother. A mother who would defend and comfort her daughter no matter what. A mother whose eyes would light up with joy when her daughter came into the room. A mother who would never cry on to her daughter’s small shoulders. A mother completely unlike her own.

  ‘I will do my best for you,’ Lexi whispered. ‘I will love you and feed you and keep you safe and dry. I will show you kindness and patience and love and encourage you in your heart’s desires. I will make you laugh and be your friend in loneliness, and teach you to be strong, whatever life lays at your feet. I will not let you down.’

  Happy tears rolled down Lexi’s face, dropping on to her baby’s head. She kissed the tears away and stared into her daughter’s eyes, never wanting to look away. I will not let you down.

  You, baby girl, will never be alone.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Four days passed before Katy could hold her baby boy, Rufus Alexander, for the first time. She had managed, with great difficulty, to express the colostrum to be fed to the baby through the feeding tube and had been able to poke a finger in the side of the incubator to stroke the baby’s skin, but that was all. While Rufus lay in the baby observation unit, Katy had spent the first couple of days mostly lying in her bed on the ward, attached to an antibiotic drip and a catheter, waiting for her painkillers to kick in, listening to and watching new mothers around her bonding with their newborns. People had come in to visit her, brought her balloons, flowers and chocolates and baby clothes, but didn’t know quite how to act. The baby wasn’t there for them to see or to hold, and Katy was too shocked and disappointed about the birth to talk about it for long. Every time she sneezed or moved, she feared the C-section stitches would tear and, though she wanted to walk, she could shuffle down the corridor only a few steps before she felt dizzy and exhausted.

  ‘It wasn’t quite what I was expecting,’ she’d said as chirpily as she could when Erin and Mel, still heavily pregnant, had come in to see her. Seeing something – perhaps fear – stretch across their faces as she briefly recounted her labour, Katy had done her best to hide the horror she felt. But, after fifteen minutes, she’d had to ask them to leave, pretending that she wanted to sleep. She’d seen the way they’d looked at one another as they left the ward, as if they felt sorry for her, but she told herself not to care. There was plenty of time to win back their admiration, to prove herself. She might not have had the birth she’d planned for, so she couldn’t enjoy telling them all about the perfect birth, but there was plenty of time for them to see what a great job she would do as a mother. Besides, she hadn’t told them how she was really feeling. She hadn’t told them how awful she felt physically. Even though she’d had a C-section, there was still so much blood. When she stood up for the first time, a great pool of blood poured out of her and on to the floor, which made her want to faint. She had to wear tight medical stockings to prevent her blood from clotting, which were impossible to get on without Alan’s help. And every time she went to the bathroom to change her sanitary towels, dragging her drip with her, the sight and smell of blood and amniotic fluid made her queasy. It was also impossible to wash thoroughly. Sitting on a plastic chair in the hospital shower, she was terrified her C-section scar would become infected. Everyone that visited (with the notable exception of Anita) encouraged her to ‘get some rest’ while the baby was on the neonatal ward, so that she would make a quick recovery after the C-section. But sleeping was almost impossible. The babies on the ward were constantly crying and Katy had a gnawing sense of dread snapping at her ankles which kept her awake. She was careful not to tell anyone how she felt and managed to hold it together for Alan’s visits, but, inside, she felt like screaming.

  ‘Does it feel good?’ asked Alan, when Katy held Rufus properly for the first time and, after a stressful twenty minutes, eventually managed to get him to latch on to her breast. Katy blinked away the tears in her eyes, while Alan smiled fondly at her, relieved, she thought, that Katy was at last showing emotion. But the tears were not tears of joy. The tears were out of fear. No, she thought. It doesn’t feel good. It feels like nothing. I feel nothing. She stared at Rufus, desperate for the sight of his tiny fingers and toes to inspire a rush of love, desperate for his little, dark eyes to trigger the maternal instinct. But it didn’t happen. The thought that perhaps this wasn’t even her son, that there had been a mix-up on the neonatal ward, had crossed her mind more than once. She felt nothing.

  ‘Yes,’ she mumbled at Alan, who put his arm over her shoulder and lovingly kissed her cheek.

  ‘You’re amazing,’ Alan said, his eyes glassy. ‘You’ve been through an awful trauma, but you’re so together. Rufus is lucky to have a mum like you. Other women would not be able to cope, Katy. Well done. My folks are so proud of you. I thought we could Skype them when we get home.’

  It was the worst thing he could have said. Now she was going to have to carry on the pretence. Perhaps she’d feel better when she got home, she told herself, if she went along with everything that Alan was saying. He seemed to be in control.

  She tried to imagine herself in her kitchen at home, sitting at the oak table, holding Rufus on her chest as other mothers on the ward seemed to do, with Alan’s family watching her over the Internet. She did
n’t want anyone to look at her. Alan’s mother (a mother of four children) would know right away she was a fake. Right now, Katy wanted to hide. Perhaps it was the hospital environment that was making her feel so detached. The coming and going of the midwives, the fact that she could barely move on her own, the feeling of powerlessness, the other mothers looking pale and exhausted. Maybe the drugs weren’t helping either. Those painkillers with codeine in them spun her out.

  ‘I just want to get home,’ she told Alan. ‘I think we’ll be better off at home.’

  Eventually, Katy and Rufus had been given the green light to go home.

  ‘Is anyone ever going to sign the discharge form?’ she asked Alan as she sat on her bed, all her bags packed and ready to go, waiting for her drugs to be dispensed.

  ‘I’ll go and find out,’ he said, marching off to the reception desk, where a couple of midwives in blue uniforms were writing on whiteboards. Finally, someone came, and Katy limped out of the hospital, an enormous sanitary towel stuffed in her pants, her breasts aching with milk and exhaustion pressing against her forehead.

  ‘So,’ said Alan cheerily, carefully carrying Rufus in the car seat. ‘At last we can welcome Rufus to our home.’

  ‘Slow down,’ said Katy as they made their way to the exit. ‘Remember, I can’t really walk.’

  Passing by the hospital staff, Katy had a sense of her insignificance. Here, she was just another new mother, just another emergency C-section. There were hundreds just like her passing in and out of the main doors. Pushing open the door to the outside world, Katy felt utterly overcome. People bustled past, shouted, laughed and smoked on the streets. The sun shone so brightly she felt almost blinded. Holding on to a handrail for a second, she followed Alan across the car park to his BMW and steeled herself for the journey home. Alan opened the door for her and helped her in. Tears pricked her eyes. She felt like an invalid. She felt nothing like her normal self. Rufus began to cry, wanting to be fed.

  ‘Do you want to do it now?’ Alan said. ‘Before we leave?’

  ‘It might take forty minutes or more, though,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

  The sound of Rufus screaming was slicing into her head, right behind her eyes. Again, she felt she wanted to cry. She tried to turn to look at Rufus, but her scar was too painful and, besides, his car seat was facing away from her. Alan unclipped his belt.

  ‘I’ll get him out and you can feed him,’ he said. ‘Otherwise, it’ll be a dreadful car journey home.’

  Katy now realized she was wearing the wrong top for breastfeeding. She had on a dress that she had to wriggle out of, leaving her top half completely bare. Luckily, Alan’s car had tinted-glass windows, so no one could see in unless they pressed their nose up against the glass.

  ‘I’ll need my feeding pillow,’ she said. Alan handed it to her and, when she’d arranged it, he passed her Rufus, who was now incandescent with hungry rage.

  ‘Okay,’ Katy said. ‘I need to make sure the whole nipple goes in.’

  Attempting to latch Rufus on properly took too long, and each time she tried a different position he wailed some more.

  ‘I’ll just put up with the pain,’ she said, when he began to feed in the wrong position. Even through the wall of painkillers for the C-section, her toes curled in pain as he drank. She knew she’d pay for it later, but, for the time being, she was relieved Rufus was quiet. Alan put on the radio then stroked Katy’s shoulder, while she tried as hard as she could to control the impulse to scream at both of them to get the hell off her. She focused on a conversation she’d had with a midwife that morning.

  ‘How long does it take?’ she had asked in a desperate whisper. ‘To fall in love with the baby?’

  The midwife had sat down on the end of the bed and held Katy’s hand. She had smiled so kindly Katy had almost blurted out the truth.

  ‘It can take a little while,’ she said. ‘Don’t punish yourself if it doesn’t happen straight away. It will happen, I promise you that, but it can take time. Katy, if there’s one piece of advice I can give you, it’s that you mustn’t suffer in silence. Talk to your husband, talk to your friends and other new mums, talk to your health visitor, or doctor. Many, many women find having a newborn overwhelmingly hard.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Katy, smiling weakly, disappointed in the midwife’s answer, knowing that talking about how she felt would get her nowhere. If she started talking, all the negative feelings she had would become even more real. If she admitted to feeling totally out of control, how would she ever regain control? No. There was only one option available. She would have to suffer in silence.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  ‘Come down and try this,’ said Bella, holding out a dish filled with fresh pineapple. ‘Apparently, if you eat enough of it, the enzymes in it might do something to your tummy and kick-start labour.’

  Mel pulled down her black maternity top, which had ridden up and over her bump, revealing skin so stretched it looked like purple bicycle tracks in places. But that was the least of her worries. She carefully climbed down the stepladder, clutching a feather duster she was using to spring-clean the top of the bookshelves, something she could happily say she had never done before. But, in the last couple of days Mel had found that she was turning into her mother, cleaning and organizing and arranging her flat, almost obsessively. She was completely desperate for her baby to be born, especially since going to the fourth antenatal class, when Ginny had talked about the practicalities of coping with a newborn. Only Erin, herself and Rebecca were there, since Katy and Lexi had already given birth. They were so lucky! Mind you, seeing Katy had left Mel feeling like a bag of nerves. Even Katy, who seemed like Ms Capable, had been visibly shaken by her labour. But it had been an emergency C-section. Poor Katy. Lexi, on the other hand, had texted her a picture of her little girl, Poppy, and said she had ‘quite literally popped out’. Mel just felt annoyed almost the entire time now. She was fed up of learning about birth and babies, fed up of hearing about other people’s births. She just wanted to get on with her own.

  ‘All this nesting is a sign it’s near,’ Bella said, as Mel chewed on a pineapple chunk. ‘I’ve never seen you take such an interest in cleaning. When you were a teenager your bedroom always looked like it had been ransacked.’

  Mel looked around the flat. The balls of mohair wool previously strewn over one side of the sofa were neatly squashed into an old-fashioned washing basket. The books and magazines that seemed to slip off the shelves and lie on every surface were back where they should be and Leo’s various leads for his guitars and amps, normally draped over the furniture, were neatly folded into a shoebox. Most amazingly, Mel’s clothes, usually discarded in a heap on the bedroom or bathroom floor, exactly where she’d taken them off were hanging in her wardrobe. It was true that this tidy behaviour was completely out of character, but, frankly, nothing in her life felt remotely normal now. Two days away from her due date, and Mel found herself living with her mother instead of Leo, and in a flat that was so clean she could eat off the floor. Tidying up was a welcome change from obsessing about labour. And Leo? Where was Leo? Gone in a puff of smoke.

  ‘Rather pineapple chunks than Mrs Lelani’s suggestion,’ said Bella, raising her eyebrows. ‘I looked blue cohosh up on the web, and it’s not recommended at all. I know she means well, but honestly’.

  Mel swallowed a chunk of pineapple. Oh, God, the wait was unbearable – and made worse by well-meaning friends phoning or texting every five minutes to ask if anything had happened. Mel wanted to stop answering, but when she did ignore a message, frantic voicemails ensued congratulating her or wishing her good luck in labour. Bella and Mrs Lelani had been coming up with all sorts of tips to bring it on, but nothing worked. In the back of her mind –though too silly a thought to vocalize – Mel thought the baby was waiting for Mel and Leo to sort out their problems before she or he entered the world. Not that that was looking likely.

  ‘Ah, no, Mrs Lelani is lovely,’ Mel
said, taking another piece of pineapple. ‘She knows lots about herbal remedies. I thought you got on really well.’

  She moved over to the window and looked out at the street and the sea beyond. The sky had grown dark, so she clicked on the lamp that stood on the wide windowsill. It was a small green banker’s lamp Leo had bid for on eBay. She remembered the way he had jokingly punched the air when he won it. She thought of him and what he would be doing right now. She looked at her wristwatch. Almost noon. It was the weekend, but he may well be at work, staring at his screen, sipping a coffee. Flat white, one sugar. Resting her hands on her bump, she felt the baby hiccup.

  ‘I just think you should be careful telling pregnant women to take those herbs,’ Bella said. ‘But we did get on, yes. We were comparing lives as single sixty-something women. Sometimes I can’t believe I’m sixty and I’ve got a grandchild coming. I remember when I was waiting for you to come. I was a week overdue and your dad took me for a walk in the countryside. When we were walking across a field, he shouted that there was a bull coming. I was wearing red and he said it was coming towards me. You should have seen me run to the fence! I almost broke my ankle. Your dad was in stitches when he told me it was a ploy to bring on labour.’

  Both women laughed.

  ‘And did it work?’ Mel asked, turning to Bella.

  Bella shook her head. ‘Not for another four days,’ she said. ‘Silly bugger. Oh Mel, I do miss your dad at times like these. Even twenty years later I miss him. I wish he could be here to see your baby.’

  She moved towards the window and Mel put her arm around her, leaning her head into her shoulder, breathing in the faint smell of her Neal’s Yard rose face cream.

  ‘What do you think he’d say about Leo?’ Mel asked. ‘Wouldn’t be too impressed, would he?’